


Pawns In the Sky

by aurilly



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Captured, Gen, IN SPACE!, Partnership
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-13
Updated: 2017-07-13
Packaged: 2018-11-22 13:19:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,125
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11380995
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aurilly/pseuds/aurilly
Summary: After something rattles Loki on their latest mission, Steve can tell that some new threat is after them.





	Pawns In the Sky

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Independence1776](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Independence1776/gifts).



Steve made the extraction call while sliding down the cliff side of the castle. He hoped Natasha could hear him over the incessant pings of bullets pelting off his shield and Loki’s helmet.

“Over that hill!” he shouted to Loki once he thought he’d heard her cracking confirmation. “We should be able to make it if you can—”

“The diversion is already created,” Loki yelled while he ran across the meadow and back up the rocky incline to the defensible spot Steve had picked out for Natasha to land.

Steve hadn’t seen anything, and instantly burned with curiosity to see what Loki had decided upon today, but he knew better than to slow down or turn around. 

He’d never admit it, but Steve lived for Loki’s illusions. He’d seen a lot since waking up—hell, even before—but all the things that people kept insisting on adding to his list had left him cold. Loki’s magic, which wasn’t on anyone’s list, was the only development in this new world that had thrilled and delighted him enough to distract from his overall sense of loss.

(Well, kindles were pretty great, too. Kindles, La-Z-Boys, and Loki’s magic.)

Only once they were safely over the next hill, hiding on their stomachs in the tall grass, and with the whirr of the quinjet’s engines getting louder, did Steve sneak a peek. 

Today, Loki had outdone himself.

The guards they hadn’t knocked out or killed were fleeing a dragon. A silly-looking dragon, with long talons and curling whiskers. It lumbered, belly leading the way, like Steve’s childhood neighbor, Mr. O’Malley at the end of a particularly festive Saint Patty’s day. 

Over the past many missions, Steve had learned to read Loki’s mood through his choice of illusion. The silliness of this dragon indicated Loki’s more mordant than usual disdain for these antagonists. Worthier adversaries usually got something more serious, which led them to ends grisly enough that even Steve had had to step in and ask Loki to tone it down.

But today, all he said was, “Nice,” as he watched the dragon huff and puff and wave away all bullets (all the better to hide how they flew right through its intangible form), and chase the guards into panicked plummets off the side of a cliff. 

“I have been working on making the fire actually hot.” Loki’s usual slow, smug smile changed direction halfway through and ended up as a thin-lipped grimace, accompanied by a wince of pain. 

That was when Steve remembered the bullets that had ricocheted off the edge of his shield a few minutes before, towards Loki. The fact that Loki’s collar had been pulled up higher than usual—higher than earlier that day—suggested where they might have landed. 

And that was _before_ that weird flash that seemed to fall from the sky. Loki had been off in a distant courtyard while Steve had been taking down ten agents. When he’d come running back to Steve, he’d been dazed and frightened.

Steve’s response to injured teammates had always been one of guilt, expressed by admonishments. Natasha called it his one unattractive feature.

“I had the two on the left under control, by the way, down there in the lab,” he groused as the quinjet landed in front of them. “I didn’t need you to handle them for me. I didn’t need you getting hurt for that.”

Loki continued to watch the dragon, not even dignifying Steve with a glance as he replied, “Their fingers were on the triggers, guns aimed at your head, and you were looking the other way. They were about to—”

“Just because I’m not looking doesn’t mean I don’t know they’re there. I’d have been all right. It wasn’t worth you getting hurt. What happened back there? You disappeared.”

“I have come to expect greater efficiency from you than that. Surely you know it is preferable to neutralize a threat before it strikes, instead of deflecting later.”

“Not when there are three snipers with machine guns aimed at your head. And yeah, I’m talking about _your_ head,” Steve said when Loki finally spun to look at him, a millisecond of surprise flashing across his twitching nose. “You’re welcome.”

Loki pursed his lips. “As are you.”

They’d worked together enough times by now for Steve to know this was as much of a “thank you” as he was going to get. And, while it was small comfort, he also knew it was more of a “thank you” than almost anyone else got from Loki. 

“Did you call me for an extraction or not?” Natasha yelled, just as Steve belatedly realized that Loki had avoided answering his question. “Get in!”

Steve followed Loki up the gangway, shaking his head for the hundredth time at the flowing green cape Loki insisted on wearing, subtlety be damned.

(Loki had shaken his head just as many times at Steve’s brightly colored uniform.)

Natasha took off again before either of them had taken their seats. Even without the serum, years as a straphanger in the New York subways had taught Steve perfect balance. Spoiled brat Loki, on the other hand, tripped and fell forward from the jolt. His hand pressed against Steve’s stomach to catch and right himself. Almost immediately, he pushed off and sat on the long bench nearby. Steve continued up to the cockpit and took the empty seat beside Natasha.

Below them, the dragon vanished. No guards remained alive in the vicinity.

“How’d it go?” Natasha asked after the initial concentration of take-off.

Steve pulled the test tube out of his utility belt, threw it on the ground, and poured a nearby can of Pepsi all over the resulting spill. 

So much for AIM’s super serum experiments on children. So much for anyone else—even SHIELD—getting their hands on the formula and trying again. 

“I was drinking that,” Natasha complained.

“Cell neutralized, equipment destroyed, agents either dead or incapacitated. But… There was something else. There was a minute there when… I don’t know and I didn’t see, but something happened. Something went wrong.”

“Magic?”

“Don’t know. Only he can tell us.”

“Great.” Natasha had been successful in her first couple of attempts of getting Loki to divulge information, but he had eventually cottoned on to her methods; she hadn’t cracked him in months.

Steve glanced towards the dark back section of the quinjet, where Loki was sitting, elbows on his knees, head cradled awkwardly in his hands despite his neck wound, stupid cape somehow perfectly arranged around him. 

Steve was certain Loki could hear them talking about him—careful observation over the past year had given him a pretty good sense of the range of Asgardian earshot. But Loki said nothing, which meant he was in one of his moods. 

On the one hand, he knew Loki was sitting back there pretending everything was fine, pretending he hadn’t been shot in the neck and leg and that his leather pants weren’t a sticky mess of blood right now. Hell, Steve was sitting here with Natasha, pretending everything was fine, pretending that the holes in the briefings he got before every mission didn’t bother him.

On the other hand… 

On the other hand, stitching Loki’s wounds after a mission, and feeling Loki’s magic stitching his own, had become a ritual to which Steve looked forward, messed up as it was. 

He wondered if Loki knew it wasn’t even necessary, if he knew that Steve’s body would heal itself without any help.

Probably not. Loki wasn’t a nice enough guy to help out with something that wasn’t absolutely necessary.

After landing in Westchester, Steve and Natasha took the Metro North straight to the debrief. Loki had disappeared into the crowd at the airport, as he always did. They let him go without a word. Natasha knew well enough not to bother trying to track him. Steve knew Loki would contact him later.

* * *

A couple of hours later, they were at the Cipriani in Grand Central, overlooking the rushing commuters, and with a great view of the historic clock. To the world, Steve and Natasha looked like a young couple having lunch while waiting for their train. Fury, five tables away and working on a crossword puzzle, might have been anyone.

“Steve says something went wrong,” Natasha said into her comm, around a mouthful of sandwich.

“What kind of wrong?” Fury mumbled back. The man at the table beside him glanced up at what looked like a crazy person talking to himself. Fury leveled him a terrifying one-eyed glare, and the man looked back down at his phone again.

“Couldn’t tell you,” Steve said. “Only Loki can. But he came back rattled, scared-looking.” He left out the part about how he’d come back injured, too. He doubted Loki would appreciate him sharing that fact; he didn’t think it was worth jeopardizing the fragile trust they’d slowly built up.

“Why isn’t he here to tell us, then?” Fury asked.

“You know he doesn’t do briefings.”

Living on Earth and helping the Avengers was part of the deal Thor had worked out for his brother after whatever drama that had gone down back home. No one knew the details, and both refused to talk about it, but it must have been serious. Asgard had never made such an arrangement before, Thor had said. So, Loki played along, just enough to tiptoe within the border of the invisible agreement, but no more. Showing up for briefings fell under his definition of “more.” 

“Do you know where he is?” Fury asked next, exasperation audible in his voice.

“Negative.”

“Which means you’ve got half an idea. Otherwise, you’d answer in plain English.”

Sometimes, Steve thought, Fury compensated for having one eye by having a thousand others. 

“I’ll find out what I can,” Steve promised, and then relayed any remaining details he thought might be important.

“Where are you headed?” Natasha asked a few minutes later, after Fury had taken off, his newspaper tucked under his arm, and the name of Versailles’s architect the only crossword clue remaining.

“I’m headed for Tony’s gym. Spotting for Bucky.” 

“Is that all you have planned?” she asked, and they both knew she was trying to find out if he was going to see Loki.

“For now, that’s all,” he answered honestly.

“We all know you’re the only one who knows where he lives.”

“I’ll tell you a secret,” Steve whispered into her ear, teasing, pretending to kiss her goodbye. “He doesn’t live anywhere.”

* * *

Bucky was always relieved to see Steve back home in one piece after a mission. Despite frequent assertions that he no longer wanted to fight, he maintained a low-level resentment that someone else was now working with him. Bucky’s main means of expressing these conflicting emotions was kicking Steve’s feet out from under him in the boxing ring. 

“Good thing this new partner of yours has magic powers to save your ass,” he said as he helped Steve back to his feet. “You’re getting sloppy without me.” 

They were leaving the gym when Steve’s phone rang. 

“You’re at the gym right now, aren’t you? With Barnes,” Loki said without saying hello. “I need you to come to an address that I will text you.”

“Okay,” Steve replied, automatically, even though he knew Loki never stayed around long enough for pleasantries or agreements. The call had clicked off before the two syllables were out.

“Loki?” Bucky asked after Steve had hung up. When Steve nodded, he continued. “Right on schedule. It’s sorta considerate of him, you know, waiting until we finish our workout before these calls. I don’t know how he always knows just when we’re done.”

The promised text arrived a moment later with an address in Washington Heights.

* * *

Steve made his way upstairs from the A train platform and blinked as soon as the sunlight struck him. This quiet neighborhood wasn’t where anyone would have expected Loki to stay, but Steve knew that was exactly why he’d chosen it. For extra security, getting to the sixth-floor walkup apartment required a climb that only an Asgardian or a super-soldier wouldn’t mind.

A flash of light shone through the keyhole, and then Steve was being pulled inside the door.

Steve had visited multiple of Loki’s squats over the past few months. They’d ranged from palatial hotel suites to palatial Tribeca lofts. Not much of a range, in fact. However, this one bucked the trend by being poor and plain, lacking both furniture and a view. Loki hadn’t even tried to cast an improving illusion. He paced the space between the kitchen island and the far living room wall.

Steve pitied the downstairs neighbors, because, while Loki could move as quietly as a cat when he wanted, when he was in these kinds of moods, his tread was like a herd of bilgesnipe (a species Loki had recently told him about).

“What’s going on?” Steve asked. He held up the bandages and wound dressing he’d bought at the Duane Reade on the way, in expectation of their usual medical attention sharing. “Are you okay? Need help?” 

Loki waved the stuff away. “What did you tell them at the debriefing?”

“That something weird happened, but I didn’t know what it was. Fury wants you to come in. Thor’s worried, too.”

Loki’s head snapped up. “You told Thor?”

Steve shrugged. “He and Bucky were working out, but Jane called him soon after I got there. Before he left, he asked how you were, how the mission went. So I told him.”

“How did he take it?” Loki asked curiously. “Did he seem surprised?”

“I told you. He was worried. What the hell’s going on?”

“So, he doesn’t know. Which means…”

“Know what?”

“You think it was magic that stymied me in that courtyard. It wasn’t. It was the opposite.”

“What’s the opposite of magic?”

Loki huffed, as though he could barely suffer to be around such a fool. “Did you see the light that shone down from the sky?”

Steve nodded. “What was it?”

“A scavenger’s beam. They’re coming for me. It’s over.”

“What’s—” Steve never got to finish asking, because just then, the beam returned, burned through the roof, and engulfed them both.

* * *

There were no thoughts in the blue light, no screaming or reactions. There was nothing.

It took a few minutes for Steve's mind to start working again and for his body to feel... there… once more. The cold hardness under his palms and knees suggested a metal floor, very different from the splintering wood of Loki's apartment. Loud chattering filled the space with echoing noise. Steve stared at the grey slab that his eyes first focused on before looking up. Loki lay sprawled beside him, equally turned around and out of breath. Around them stood an assortment of men--if they could all be called men. Some of them definitely were, but there were others, who...

From the way he stood, quiet amidst the rabble, confident in a tiny metal box filled with enormous guys, Steve could easily pick out the leader. He looked like a man, except that he was blue, with a fringe on the top of his head, like a Roman centurion, it without the rest of the helmet.

"Gotcha," the leader said.

Someone--or about five extremely large someones--must have started to grab at Loki and raise him to his feet, because Steve felt, even before he saw, Loki's displeasure manifesting as a full-body revulsion. He reeled back, his hands about to make one of those elegant passes that resulted in the illusions that had delighted Steve for a year. 

But it all came to nothing, because a soft rush sounded near Steve's ear, and an arrow appeared next to Loki's still raw and red neck.

"Not a move, son," the blue leader said. "And no, your toughness is no match for it. It'll pierce your arteries and come out the other side, and I'll stand over your body while you twitch and bleed to death. And you," he said to Steve, who had already started to make intentions towards saving Loki, "you make one move and your friend here dies."

"He is not my friend," Loki grunted, but his hands stopped moving, and he winced in pain again as the tip of the arrow caressed his still untended wound. The men took the opportunity to bind his hands.

"Maybe not, but _he_ thinks he is, and that's what matters.” The blue leader was right, too, because Steve had stilled enough for someone behind him to have snapped some magnetic cuffs on his wrists, pinning his hands behind his back. “That’s why you’re the one with the arrow to the neck. The request talked about this one being some big damn hero, and you... well. We all know what you are, don't we?"

"No, we all don’t," Loki seethed, and for the first time, there was something that, in the right light (which this artificial yellow glare was not) might have looked like pleading.

"Let’s just say there’s more than one of us on this ship with a pretty blue face.”

Steve had no idea what they were all talking about, and didn’t care. He’d been using the distraction to assess the situation and the rest of the people around him. A pane of glass set into what looked like a door showed only their reflections, which meant it was a window behind which everything was dark.

Instead of deferential silence, his captors—about twenty of them—whooped and whispered and did their own thing. There was no discipline here, no organization. Whoever they were, this was no army. They were more like the pirates in those movies the kids at the hospital he volunteered at had made him watch (the only part Steve had enjoyed was Moneypenny’s appearance).

Anyway. Pirates. Steve could work with this. Now, if only he could get Loki on board, send a message to him somehow. 

“I have heard tell of you, Yondu,” Loki said. “I know what you do. You have been cast out, and I know why.”

The barb hit its mark, but Yondu’s eyes only got harder at whatever accusation Loki had just leveled. 

“Who sent you?” Loki asked. “Who paid you?”

“Who do you think?”

“Odin, of course.”

“Those snooty Asgardians? No. They're the ones who made the treaty to save you.” Yondu looked over at Steve. More specifically, at the shield that had come with them, and which lay a couple of feet away. “I have a feeling my buyer’s gonna love the both of you.”

At a commanding look from Yondu, one of the larger men tried to pick up Steve's shield. He struggled under its weight. So, Steve ascertained, they were nothing like Loki or Thor, or even himself. Aside from their captain, these were just regular men, or something near it.

The crowd led the prisoners—pushing Steve with obnoxious punches to the small of his back, and leading Loki by the strange arrow that looked to be controlled by Yondu simply whistling—through a different set of doors and into a larger space.

There was only one thing it could be. Steve had never cared much for space narratives, but he could recognize them. The gritty, shabby tin can they were in. The darkness on the other side of what had to have been a window. The beam of light with a Scotty most likely around somewhere to operate it…

They were in space. Honest to god _space_.

Loki, who had traveled to countless worlds during his long life, didn’t return Steve’s excited glance. 

The men led Steve and Loki through the ship and threw them into a dark cell that opened, through widely set bars, to a hallway. They then went off to drink, and maybe have dinner, if Steve understood correctly. 

“What’s going on?” he asked, as soon as they were alone.

“I think we are to be sold to Taneleer Tivan.”

“Who?”

“He is known as ‘The Collector’. As you probably can guess, he acquires objects of interest from all corners of the universe. Sometimes people, too. He has been at it since time immemorial.”

“They’re going to sell him the shield,” Steve said, now piecing together Yondu's words in light of this new information.

“And you with it, most likely. The Collector keeps track of interesting news. He may have heard of you. If so, he will be eager to add you to his hall of personages. He has tubes set up to keep his exhibits in suspended animation, forever. Rather similar to your friend’s situation with his former captors.”

Steve ground his teeth at the thought and strained yet again at the cuffs. It was no use. 

“What about you?”

“I have my suspicions. If it was not Odin, then…”

“Then, what?” Steve asked.

“It is too long of a story. Suffice to say, I would prefer the fate that awaits you. Better to be an exhibit than what lies in store for me.”

“I don’t care how long the story is. I’ve got nowhere to be. Neither do you.”

Loki slumped against the wall until he fell into a seated position on the hard metal floor.

“Thor never told you what I did, did he? He never told any of you what I am?”

“He said you were his brother, and that you’d… done something you all regretted.”

Loki laughed, a short, barking, bitter thing. “He should try not to speak for me. I never regretted it. I never regretted any of it. But it seems today I am to face the retribution Thor and Frigga’s pleading had been designed to prevent. The Jotun are cleverer than I gave them credit for. Odin negotiated not to have to turn me over to them for justice; however, there must have been a loophole by which, if I were captured by someone else, I could be sold to them, without Asgard’s leave.”

“What did you do?” Steve asked. His stomach was rumbling; ever since the serum, he’d needed to eat every few hours, which made captivity even more tortuous than for normal people. More than anyone else in a similar position, he needed Loki to tell him the story, if only to distract from his hunger. And the more he knew about the situation, the better a plan he could make.

“I tried to destroy a realm. The realm of my birth.”

“You tried to destroy Asgard?”

Loki briefly, but horrifyingly, told Steve about a place called Jotunheim, about a war fought a thousand years ago, about a truth he had learned shortly before coming to Earth, about his dramatic reaction to this truth. About what he’d done, and the bargain his father had struck with the offended realm.

It was a lot to take in, all at once, but Steve, ever practical, focused on one thing. He’d save processing his reaction to the rest of the news for later. To be honest, he wasn't that surprised, and did wonder, for a fleeting second, what that said about him and about how much he'd come to rely on having Loki as a partner.

“So, you’re some kind of ice wizard?” he asked.

“You miss the point.” Loki’s hackles had immediately gone up. After that level of sharing, something he’d never done in their entire partnership, he was ready to shut down again.

Steve needed to stop him. They both needed each other if they were get out of this. 

“No, I don’t think I do.” Steve decided to allow a moment’s reprieve from the topic, if only to get Loki back onto it from a different angle, one less likely to make him shut down. He looked through the bars at the empty hallway and said, “We’re in a spaceship. Ever seen one like it before? You said you knew this Yondu. What’s his story?”

“He is a Ravager. Scanvengers and pirates, would be the closest equivalent in your world.”

“Ha!” Steve exclaimed. “I guessed right.”

Loki shook his head. “That’s wonderful for you. Truly. Anyway. Ever since trafficking in children resulted in his excommunication from the Ravager clan, he and his crew have had to make their own way, without the support of the others. They take on jobs that not even other Ravagers would touch. Jobs that would start wars, if anyone found out. The delivery of Odin’s disgraced son, to the Collector, to be then quietly traded to the Jotun for some other treasure, in direct opposition to negotiated agreements, is such a job. Your being near me at the time of my capture is simply extra coin in Yondu’s pockets.”

“And the ship? Any escape routes? How fast do they go and how can we get home?”

“I have no home.”

Steve huffed in impatience and hunger. “You know I mean Earth.”

“There ought to be a sort of private, small ship connected near where the tractor beam pulled us in. We have not been moving very fast, not been gone for very long, so likely could reach Earth again fairly quickly.” Loki collapsed; this was, by far, the longest he had talked at a stretch since Steve had known him. “But it is useless. We are bound, you and me. If you could have broken out, you would have by now.”

“But you can break out. The cuffs they’ve got on you look like the cuffs they’ve got on me. Strong, but brittle. The kind of thing I can’t break without leverage. But freeze them cold enough? I saw things like this snap during the war. If I’ve got this whole Jotun thing right, you can freeze things just by touching them. You could snap us both free. If you do it quick, we can make it out of here.”

Loki went even paler than usual. “I can’t… I have never been able to will the transformation. It is older than my conscious mind, something too ingrained to… I don’t know how…”

“You mean you don’t want to know how. Your whole self, from before you can even remember, wanted to be Aesir. So much that you willed yourself into a form you don’t know how to get out of. And that’s fine. But for one minute, Loki, just one minute, I need you to try to be Jotun. What’s worse? One minute in a form you hate, or the rest of your life being tortured by them for what you did?” 

(Steve left out the part about himself being put in a case like Bucky; given Loki’s earlier, possibly strategic, possibly not, remark about them not being friends, he didn’t know how much sway bringing himself into the argument might have.)

Loki thought, bit his lip, and left Steve in silent suspense for one of the longest minutes of his life—it felt even longer than the freezing cold drive in an open truck across the width of Germany. Eventually, Loki’s eyes fluttered shut. Steve could tell from the rhythmic twitching on the left side of his jaw that he was concentrating, trying out a brand of magic that didn’t come easily to him, that he didn’t know how to control at all.

Steve wondered when he’d become such an expert on Loki’s every expression, when he’d practically learned to read his mind. He wondered if Loki had won the same measure of him.

Loki was trying, Steve could tell. He was trying hard, but it wasn’t working. In a minute, he’d open his eyes and declare it impossible, followed by a dry, dark quip making depressing light of their fate. 

Steve wasn’t going to accept that. He tried another angle.

“I’ve never told anyone this,” he said softly. “Not even Bucky. But sometimes? I miss the old me. The ninety pound weakling. Usually it's when I want to be left alone, to be nobody, to know that the few people who liked me did so for genuine reasons. To be able to fit in small spaces. There were advantages. No one gets it, but I miss him. I’m at home in this body and I’m glad of it, and some part of me always felt that this is what I should look like… But it still sometimes feel like clothes I’m wearing. Sometimes you just want to be naked.” Steve looked up from where he’d been whispering his confession into his lap to see if Loki was listening, if it was working. There was no response, neither verbal nor physical, but he kept going. “You ever feel like that? You ever wish you could slip right out of your skin and be someone else? Someone you know in the back of your head would be just as real? Can you think of a time?”

Loki was thinking, clenching. Evidently, he’d just opened a well of examples, moments of discomfort or resentment during his long life.

The low light of the cell made it difficult to tell at first, but slowly, slowly, Loki’s skin began to darken, not in a blush, but something different. More than the color, however, Steve was surprised to see a couple of faintly raised lines on his cheeks and forehead, oddly pretty shapes, not random marks. He didn’t look like Yondu; he looked like Loki, with some face paint.

Steve understood what it had taken for Loki to call this up; he understood better than almost anyone else might have. However, he could also see well enough to know that someone else might have called it hardly a transformation at all, and not worth this much drama. 

Loki didn’t waste time. Following Steve’s advice, he broke the binds on his hands and feet, and then walked over to Steve and broke those, too. He was ready to break the bars of their cell next, but Steve stepped in.

“Let me.” Steve bent the bars wide enough to let them pass through. He grabbed the shield that the men had thrown into the cell with them and took off at a run in the direction they’d been led.

As they ran, the blue leeched out of Loki’s skin, leaving him pale again. The effort of holding the form, even for a minute, must have taxed him, because he huffed. Loki never huffed. 

“It must be feeding time,” Loki noted. “They must all be in the mess hall.”

Steve wished he was in the mess hall. However, Loki was right, because there were hardly any men walking around. It was easy enough to hide around corners to avoid the few that they might have run into.

“Hey! You!” One of the biggest guys—who’d earlier been calling himself Taserface, of all things—was the only one to spot them on his way through the ship. He began to yell for help and looked ready to push a button on the wall, most likely an alarm. But Steve was too quick. He hurled the shield at his chest, propelling him backwards and off his balance just long enough to get the drop on him. Together, Steve and Loki bundled him into a closet, and left him there, gagged with a piece of his own shirt.

Without any further incident, they made it back to the same bay in which they’d first found themselves.

Loki picked up a couple of helmets and two small packets. He tossed one set over to Steve. “Put the helmet on. And the packet is a suit, to be used only in emergencies.”

“They’ll see us leaving,” Steve said as he located the button that should eject the ship that he’d been too busy to notice before. Space, he was deciding, wasn’t that complicated. Less complicated than the future on Earth, most days. He could get used to this. Too bad they were leaving. 

“They’ll be too distracted to notice us leaving,” Loki said, with his characteristic small smile.

Steve grinned back. Loki was going to be all right. And Steve was going to get a diversion out of this.

It was a tight squeeze getting both of their tall bodies, plus the shield, into a tiny cockpit meant for one. Once they’d arranged themselves, Loki shut his eyes and collected power in his hands. A minute later, alarms had gone off all around them, and a loudspeaker gave an announcement.

“Everyone to the guns! Everyone to arms!” Other shouts and terrified squawks sounded over the loudspeaker. All around, the metal that made up the ship reverberated as men ran along every length of floor.

Steve didn’t know anything about spaceships, but he could read a map. There had been a massive one on a wall near where they’d met Taserface. It was in his pocket now, to be studied later, but his photographic memory had pinpointed where Earth was relative to the planet he’d overheard Yondu say he wanted to reach next. While Loki focused on sustaining and enlarging whatever illusion he’d made, Steve pinpointed where they should go and experimentally touched what looked like a promising control.

Their little ship lurched forward, out into space. Steve took half a second to marvel at the beauty of the stars before from, from an angle he’d never thought he’d see. Then he set to work giving himself a hopefully not-crash course in how to fly a spaceship. It was both similar to and wildly different from flying the quinjet—something he’d only ever watched Natasha do, but never tried himself. They bounced a few times, zig zagged in not quite the right direction, but soon Steve got the hang of it. 

“Here,” Loki said. “This button will make a hyperspace jump to the destination of your choice, out of their sight and ability to follow. Better than us losing our lunch with your flying.”

“What lunch?” Steve asked, not quite joking. He looked over his shoulder at today’s illusion. It was a grand one. A hundred elegant ships dotted the sky around Yondu’s hulking space fortress. 

“What is it?”

“It is the appearance of the entire Asgardian army, come to punish Yondu for helping the Jotun subvert the treaty. I have been working on making the lasers actually seem to hit,” Loki said happily.

“Nice,” Steve replied.

Together, they pressed the button, and it all disappeared in a whirr. 

Steve puked harder than he had that day on the Cyclone.

* * *

Loki took over the controls when they popped out of hyperspace just outside Earth’s atmosphere. Judging from the beaches and volcanoes of the island chain they slowly made their way towards, Steve guessed this was Hawaii.

Loki set them down gently on a beach, disturbing only a flock of surfers who were too laid-back to be actually disturbed.

“Do you have any lunch?” Loki asked them, too imperiously for the request. “My friend needs to eat every few hours, or he becomes insufferable. And it has been at least eight hours since his last meal.”

The word ‘friend’ wasn’t lost on Steve; nor was its use as a way of confirming that what Loki had said earlier on the ship had been a lie for Yondu’s benefit. Loki also asked for bandages and a firtst aid kit. Together, he and Steve sat on the beach and dressed the no longer fresh wounds that they’d never had a chance to tend to.

While he worked his way through the six sandwiches that had been tossed his way, Steve called Natasha and Bucky to give his location and assure them of his safety. 

“They’ll be here in five hours to pick us up,” he told Loki when it was all settled. 

“They can pick _you_ up. I will find my own way.”

“Still not doing briefings?” 

“Tell Fury whatever you like. The only briefing that matters is the one I must have with Thor. He will tell Odin, and there will be war. The next time Yondu sees the Asgardian army, their spears will pierce and their lasers will do more than simply appear to destroy. As for the Jotun…” He smiled, nasty and frightening, before calming himself back into gravity. “You will not tell the others. You will not tell them what I…”

“It’ll stay between you and me and Thor,” Steve promised.

“Good. And now, I’m going to look for some lodgings while I wait for Thor. I’ll text you the address.”

They’d made so much progress today, both for Loki and together, but Steve was happy to feel as though nothing at all had changed. He watched Loki walk away, dumb cape rippling in the breeze, but slowly shrinking into nothingness as he disguised himself as just another surfer. 

And then he was gone. For now.


End file.
